Synthesis and characterization of a fragment of an ice nucleation protein

Synthetic peptides were used as models for studying the conformation of ice nucleation proteins. We chemically synthesized four peptides (16-, 24-, 32-, and 48-mer) that consisted of two to six repeats of the consensus repeating octapeptide unit of ice nucleation proteins and evaluated their conformation by circular dichroism spectroscopy. These model peptides exist predominantly as random coils in aqueous solution, but adopt alpha-helical …